Cboe announces successful migration of Cboe Futures Exchange to proprietary technology platform

Cboe Global Markets, Inc., one of the world’s largest exchange holding companies, today announced the successful migration of Cboe Futures Exchange (CFE) to its proprietary Bats technology, a significant milestone in the company’s multi-exchange, multi-year technology integration.

Trading on the new technology platform opened in Global Trading Hours at 5:00 p.m. CT on Sunday, February 25. At the end of the trading session at 4:00 p.m. CT on Monday, February 26, 98 trading firms accessed the new platform, trading a total of 159,492 contracts.

Some of the new and enhanced features of the platform include:

• A new order-by-order market data (PITCH) feed, which provides microsecond timestamps offering greater visibility into CFE;
• Enhanced Bandwidth/Port Order rate thresholds, which have increased 100 times their previous thresholds;
• More than 80% latency reduction;
• Enhanced risk controls and self-trade prevention;
• Improved complex spread order handling; and,
• A fully-featured Customer Web Portal for trading and clearing firms.

Ed Tilly, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cboe, said: “As we said at the start of this process, we are laser focused on executing a seamless technical and operational integration of our exchange platforms. The flawless migration of CFE to Bats state-of-the-art technology is a major step in this journey. This and our successive migrations will culminate in our ability to offer our customers a common, world-class trading experience across all our equities, options and futures markets. Chris Isaacson and his team did an extraordinary job in hitting this key milestone on schedule, and I want to congratulate them on a job well done.”

Chris Isaacson, Chief Information Officer of Cboe, said: “Better technology makes better markets, and delivering a best-in-class platform to our futures trading customers was our priority when it came to CFE. Our goal was to make the trading experience more efficient and user-friendly, and match that with the same great customer service we’ve always offered our customers globally. It is worth noting that our ability to keep to an aggressive timeline for our technology migration is due to the dedication of our fantastic team and the diligent preparations of our customers.”

Cboe’s C2 Options Exchange is planned to migrate to Bats technology on May 14, 2018. Customers were able to certify on C2’s new platform beginning in December 2017, and February 24, 2018, was the first weekend test. Three additional testing opportunities – on March 17, April 14 and May 12 – will be held in the run up to go-live. The migration date for Cboe Options Exchange will be announced in April. In the meantime, Cboe is planning to implement two technology enhancements to the marketplace in 2018: the migration of S&P 500 Index (SPX) options to Hybrid trading – planned for second quarter – and the introduction of new floor terminals – planned for the second half of 2018.